MPR: Hybrid Corn: Genetic Diversity at Risk?

Seed-Corn Companies' Consolidation May Have Long-Term Impact
By Mark Steil
October 20, 1997

The smallest part of the annual corn harvest may be the most important. While most of the grain is used for animal feed, a small portion is seed corn - the foundation for next year's crop. The number of seed-corn companies has been falling steadily as the technology to produce new corn hybrids becomes more complex. The consolidation has some worried about the future of corn. They're concerned the plant's genetic make-up is becoming less diverse, making it more susceptible to the bacteria, fungus, and insects which prey on the crop.

GEORGE TESCH OF OLIVIA has nearly 40 years experience in the seed corn business. In one way, he says, the industry has not changed much. The dominant company, then and now, is Pioneer. From another angle, though, change is everywhere.

Tesch: The consolidation of the industry is the primary one. Old-line family seed companies that have been there for years and years, now are being changed and bought up by other companies.
Audio: Sound of auctioneer

Tesch's company, Quality Seed Associates, went on the auction block recently. Tesch was a corn wholesaler; he sold his seed to companies which, in turn, sold it to farmers. Tesch says, in recent years, he lost most of those customers when they were bought by large agricultural conglomerates. Tesch also had a hard time competing financially with the major companies. Several years ago, a wet summer and early frost cut production. It was a blow from which Quality Seed never recovered.

Tesch: A large bump for me is just a pebble in the road of progress to large company like Pioneer.
Audio: Auctioneer

One reason small seed companies are disappearing is because they can't match the technological muscle of the big companies. Public universities once were the major producers of new corn hybrids. They released their seed lines to the public. This university corn helped many small seed companies flourish. This public research has been taken over by private companies large enough to fund world-class research labs. University of Massachusetts corn researcher Garrison Wilkes says this hurts small seed businesses.

Wilkes: Larger companies are able to keep information proprietary - that is secret. When they find something they keep it under wraps - and since the universities are no longer participating in this level of breeding anymore - there is no alternative. The small seed companies disappear, the university disappears, and that leaves only the large multinationals.

Wilkes says nowadays the development of new corn lines is mainly in the hand of a dozen or so large companies. He says this creates another worry.

Wilkes: When we have very few suppliers of seed, the gene base becomes more and more narrow.

Wilkes says increased gene uniformity heightens the disease risk in the U.S. corn crop. The University of Massachusetts biologist says it's possible that a new bacteria or fungus could find a weak spot in a corn hybrid's genetic make-up and practically wipe out that particular line. He says if the major seed companies are working with similar corn parent lines to produce new hybrids, that genetic weakness could be found simultaneously in corn hybrids from different companies.

Wilkes: We experienced just such a thing in the early 70s when most U.S. corn was using a male sterility system to produce the seed at the corn company. And this seed was susceptible to a fungal attack. And that crash is called "genetic vulnerability."

Officials at the nation's largest seed company say they watch closely for genetic vulnerability in their corn. Pioneer Hi-Bred vice president Bob Wishman says the company constantly works new genetic material into the corn seed it sells farmers.

Wishman: We had a product that had a strain that came from tropical material, Latin America, that was extremely drought- and heat-tolerant. So in that way, we gave them genetically different product that worked to their advantage for a number of years.

Wishman says far from being genetically risky, corn hybrids are better in every way than in the past.

Wishman: The corn hybrids that we have today are tougher - they can take more drought and temperature stress than the hybrids we had 15 years ago. Corn breeding has been adding, on the average, a bushel and a half to two bushels to the national average each year.
Audio: Auctioneer

For George Tesch, the end of his seed business in Olivia is a time for reflection. He says more consolidation is likely in the seed business.

Tesch: The fear that a farmer has to have is with the technology that's being added to a bag of seed corn. Will the marketplace for $2.50 corn support the price that a company may have to charge for a bag of seed? That's the key.

Seed companies are working to breed corn which will resist a variety of plagues, including insects, fungus, drought. Early field reports on a genetically altered plant which resists the European corn borer have been so promising that it's likely to increase the rush to tinker with the genetic makeup of corn.

	Sign up to receive e-mail newsletters

	Audio help

	Text: Sm : Md : Lg